


Homefall

by lyricwritesprose



Series: TARDIS Series [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 17:17:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11063550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: How is she supposed to help him if hewantsto burn?





	Homefall

**Author's Note:**

> This story belongs to the pre-"Day of the Doctor" timeline.

_The human picks her way through the broken console room, flinching from the fires and oblivious to the deeper damage, the way the space is tattered and billowing and unsafe. She sees the motionless, open-eyed form and rushes to it. "We have to get out of here! Where's the Doctor?"_

_"Dead." He rises from the ground like a fighter, showing that despite the destruction, his body is uninjured. He giggles hysterically. "I killed him." And then he forces the mad laughter down and spears the human with his eyes, cold blue eyes full of endings. "Run."_

No. She won't consider that possibility. Won't permit it.

She is torn and bleeding and bereft. She watches her thief release the weapon that will burn her birthplace and all her sisters, and in the aftermath, she wishes she had a voice to scream with. If she were a linear being, if she needed to put her grief within specific bits of time, she would be paralyzed with it. But she's also too injured for her thief to stay within her; she needs to collapse and reformat herself in ways that a linear being can't survive. Her thief is not helping—if she can't find a being who pulls him back into the world, he lies there. Lies there until he stops. 

And he keeps driving away everyone she thinks to ask.

_"Doctor, is that you?" This one, the curious one with the metal pet, has seen her thief in two different guises; she knows he can change, and why. But her eyes flick to the cloth that he's wearing, simple black things beneath a black-dyed garment made of skin, and he sees the doubt. He thinks so much faster than they do, he knows what she'll assume from the color, and it's a simple thing for him to imitate a well-known smile and say, "Not quite, my dear," in tones that she recognizes—_

How can he want pain so much that he pretends to be _that?_ An echo from an unrealized possibility, _that_ one with a welding torch and a smile like pure destruction, coming towards her—if she were the sort of being who shuddered in horror, she would do so.

If he only told more of his friends that he changes, this wouldn't be such a problem. He has so very many, strewn across the universe, stitching their small bits of it together and making it right. Some of them are unreachable in her damaged state, but many are gathered on her favorite blue planet. Quite a few of them are on the same damp bit of land. There has to be someone—

_She falls out of the sky, barely controlled, aiming for the softest thing she can perceive. She breaks a placid, sessile life form by hurtling through it, and she regrets. It lives but it is always marked, always split where it should have been unified, and that is not what she does. That is not what she is_ for. __

_The human barely raises an eyebrow as she tumbles over his head. By the time she hits the soft bit, he's already loping towards her. He wades into the soft bit, already speaking as he tugs at her doors. "Well, Doctor, you've managed to destroy my willow tree and very possibly my pond. This is certainly one for the books—"_

_He lets an alarming portion of his pond into her when he climbs inside._

This one, now—this one is familiar to her, but in a more distant way than many of the others. As she explores his possibilities, it is also years ago and she is chained by her thief's people. This human is there, befriending her thief even as they goad each other. He only rides inside her once and he understands her less than most, but her thief connects deeply to him.

He's a soldier, but not just that. _Soldier_ has no moral color to it; soldiers are just living beings who make of themselves a barrier between one thing and another. This soldier, though, is a barrier between her blue world and the dark, between innocents and pain; he specifically shapes himself as a guardian. His most suitable title, interestingly, is one he has been given by other humans. He is the knight errant.

_The knight rushes to her thief's side much as all the others would do, but with less fear. He doesn't seem to_ do _fear, as if he's found it a waste of time and trained himself out of it. "Doctor," he says, "can you walk?"_

_Good. Good. He never doubts her thief's identity. She doesn't understand how he perceives it, but he knows, and that's enough._

_"No!" Her thief reacts, recoils from the man. "Get out!"_

_"Not without you. Here, let me—"_

_"Get out!"_

_"Doctor, stop being—"_

__"No! _No, that's not me! I'm not—I can't be—I'm not him! I'm not the Doctor. There is no more Doctor. Not now, not after what I—" He grabs the human's clothing and pulls him closer. "I'm not a who anymore. I'm a what."_

_"Nonsense."_

_Whatever answer her thief expects, it isn't that. The human uses the moment of surprise to get her thief on his feet, pointed at her door. He digs in his heels only a few steps later. "You don't understand. I killed them. All of them. I'm a monster. I'm Death._ Run, _Alastair. Run away from me, and—"_

_"Don't be insulting, man." The knight lets go of her thief long enough to look him in the eyes. "Doctor—no, be quiet and listen for once. I don't know what you've done, or think you're responsible for, but you'll have plenty of time to tell me. And at the end of that, if I believe that you're a monster and a threat to the people of this world, I will deal with you. Right now, however, we are_ literally _arguing inside a burning—contraption."_

_The thief shakes his head strongly. "No. No, you don't believe that. You don't think it's possible. You're just saying that to get me out."_

_"Naturally. But I'll make you a promise, Doctor. If the world is ever in danger from you—no matter how ludicrous I find that prospect—you have my word that I will protect it." Her thief wavers. "And you know what my word is worth."_

_"All right." A broken-sounding surrender. She doesn't understand how not burning can put him in so much pain. "All right. But—"_

_The knight maneuvers him to the door. "In case you somehow missed it, Doctor, the room is on fire. It can wait." A mutter as her door closes behind them: "Not an ounce of common sense between the lot of yourselves."_

Her first impulse is to reject the possibility. Violently. He _threatens_ her thief. How can he be a companion, meeting her thief's agony with harsh words, promises of distant violence—

But her thief moves.

Possibly—that's what he needs?

Possibly the knight understands what he needs, and when he needs it. She sees him caring for her thief, gentle, patient. When her thief strikes at him with words—and her thief can savage whole timelines with talk, if he chooses—the knight strikes them aside with his own blunt instruments. _Nonsense._ And _ridiculous._ But he also speaks the texture of his soldier's life, details of his own loss, and her thief listens. Even though the knight cannot touch her thief's mind, those words form delicate lines between the two psyches. They draw away her thief's pain. Not all of it, not even close, but enough.

In any relationship, one partner can have friends that the other barely understands.

As he lies there surrounded by fire, eyes open and entirely motionless, she sets her course. She may not understand how he is helped, but she does know where. And whom.


End file.
